# 28: WHAT YOU'RE DOING NOW

The 28th May-Photo-A-Day-In-July: "What you're doing now"

When I first stumbled upon Terence, one of the main reasons we became friends was our mutual passion for film making. This also happened to be the reason for our first encounter - as I was moving to Cape Town he offered to share with me his film industry contacts in the Mother City. By the end of our evening I knew I had met my best friend and my mother knew, after sharing my fun filled evening with her, that Terence would be the man I would marry.

 A year and two months later he proposed.

So, what are we doing now? We are planning a wedding of course and we have just finished creating the invitation and wedding website - I can't wait to share this once my guests have received them. We have put an enormous amount of time, love and laughter into creating them and so happy with the result. 

We have also been very busy setting up Orpen Film Making Co.: 

Wedding films | Documentaries | Your story in Film 

The incredible couple duo, Dylan and Emma Harbour, from Lad & Lass Photography have been a tremendous help and created the opportunity for us to shoot our first wedding film at the beautiful Netherwood in the KwaZulu Natal Midlands Meander.

Orpen Film Making Co. - Link to First Wedding Film

xxx

TheFutureMrsOrpen: De

#TeMarriesDe #73days 

#26: FAV THINGS TO DO ON A SUNDAY

The 25th May-Photo-A-Day-in-June: 

"FAV THINGS TO DO ON A SUNDAY"

Sunday's are possibly my most favourite day after my Birthday Day of course as it is a day filled with all of my favourite things like:

• Spending the whole day with Te
• Adventuring around Jozi
• Trying out new places
• Drinking lots of coffee
• Visiting our families
• Watching a series or two - right now We are loving Downton Abby
• Catching up on design work

And this Sunday was pretty spectacular as it just happens to be the day before my favourite kind of day! 

Today Te and I spent the day making and drinking coffee from our new Bialati  and frother set that we received from my mom for a joint birthday present and multi-tasked between working on the edit and grade of an Orpen Film Making Co. wedding video and our super fun wedding invitation. 

The Bialati 4 cup and frother is probably one of the most awesome and useful gift I have ever been given! We made an early morning coffee stop at 4th Avenue Roasters to purchase and grind our beans and then hurried home to test out our new toy.. 

The coffee was delicious and the 4 cup Bialati is perfect for us as Te prefers a stronger, shorter styled drink with little milk and more foam, where I am a classic single-shot cuppacino but picky on the foam kind of girl. The frother works wonderfully and creates the most silky smooth froth, just the way I like it! 

Bialati and Frother from: Bean There

Handsome Roasters Coffee from LA: read more here.

Ceramic Robot and Owls: Citizenship Linden

 Since tomorrow I reach the half way to 50 mark and no one at work believes that the Mom-boss can be domesticated and find her way around the kitchen, she decided to make me cupcakes and banana bread like she did when we were younger for the office tomorrow. We spent a fun afternoon in the kitchen baking, reminicing and of course there was wedding talk. I even received a baking wound: cooling rack + high shelf = what goes up must come down... onto my eye. I now have a lovely bruise forming around my eye.

These look just like they did when we were kids.

It was so worth it as the cupcakes are scrumptious and I love how home made try look. I decided to experiment and baked Te and I each a special cupcake - a hidden jelly baby in the middle.   

My lovely MOH and her fiancé came for a visit, a cup cake and to see my expression when I opened my pressebt just to see if I Really liked it - and I did! And that is why she is my MOH! Thank-you Chlo and Kerim, so very spoilt! 

(They have mastered my famous deer caught in the head light look - as seen below!)

xxx

TheFutureMrsOrpen: De

#TeMarriesDe #84 days 

# 31: FOUR THINGS

The 31st May-Photo-A-Day-in-June-the-12th-to-be-exact: "FOUR THINGS"

Thing #1 (Most Favourite Thing):

Last week we reached the 100 Day mark to becoming Mrs Orpen! Officially in the double digits with 94 days to go!

iphone App (AppyCouple): Countdown Timer 

iphone App (WedHappy): Task List & Countdown

Thing #2:

I cannot live with out my to-do lists (plural) and calendar reminders as I have the memory span of a gold fish! Right now I have 3 notebooks assigned to certain aspects in my life: Day Job, Wedding and Freelance.  

Due to sleepless nights I have now combined every wedding note and task scribbled in each of these books into one gigantic and detailed spreadsheet. Each task is noted, then briefly described, given a task status, a due date and then highlighted in pink if it is a DIY task and if it is completed.

Thing #3:

I have always wanted a cow-shaped milk jug, with the cows nose/mouth as the pouring spout. I haven't been able to find one...

 Until now at the Entrepo in Sandton City! But this cute little jug was not declared in the bride-to-be budget for the month so I hope he will hold out until July..   

Thing #4:

It was Te's birthday yesterday and for the first time we got to celebrate it together in the same province, city, suburb, street and home which was a real treat as I LOVE BIRTHDAYS! It happens to be my most favourite kind of day. 

We had decided that we weren't going to gift presents this year as our wedding day will be the gigantic belated present. So I found the most awesome card for Te instead. Normally the good part of the card is inside but this was not the case - the good part could be found on the back of the card... as it is because of the birthday boy that I get to experience the "love like they do in power ballads, you know like on a cliff with the wind in your hair and your eyes shut, knowning you'll never love another like this...". 

I laughed so much as I recreated the picture in my mind and the reaction one would have to the "watch out" part.

I couldn't help not gift the handsome something on his special day but I knew we made a promise of no birthday presents - instead I "treated our house" to these floating glass and black frames from Country Road and printed two of our favourite photo's from the Orpen Film Making Co. website shoot.

Lad & Lass Wedding Photography: Double Exposure layered faces || Symmetrical Bridge.

xxx

TheFutureMrsOrpen: De

#TeMarriesDe #94 days 

# 15: 7 ' O CLOCK

The 15th May-Photo-A-Day: "7 ' O CLOCK"

My weekdays begin at 5:15am, on a good day. I wake up, wash my hair everyday (there is nothing that makes me happier then soft, fluffy clean hair), stumble around as I get dressed in the dark so I don't wake the sleeping handsome who has most probably only arrived home 3 hours ago (working shifts). A blow dry and a quick tidy up (clean apartment = happiness... you know how Cinderella has the birds and mice that help her get dressed and clean so nicely while they all happily sing a song?? I don't have those... I wish I could find find me some clean mice and birds and train them up...) and I am off to work at 6:15am.

My work day begins at 7 ' O Clock and ends at 3:15pm, Monday to Friday. I am rather fortunate to be able to start and end an hour earlier so that I do not get stuck in traffic for two hours each way and I rarely take a lunch break just to make sure I complete all my tasks for the day and If not, then I usually stay until I am complete or finish up at home. I am, most of the time, the first one at our offices so they have entrusted me with keys to open up for everybody.

I am definitely one of those "early bird catches the worm" morning kind of gals and once I have risen from my slumber I am a pretty happy person. My Mom would, and still does when I stay over, wake me in the morning with a "Time to Rise and Shine" phrase.. and to this day I find I say the same phrase to myself. It's my best kind of way to wake up... 

I get a lot of work done in the first hour at work without any interruptions. I work as the... mmmmm... what is my job description currently? Anyway.. it changes so often and new tasks are always given to me that I like to call myself the jack-of-all-trades-ask-me-if-i-can-and-if-I-can"t-I-will-figure-it-out-yes-girl. So what do I do: I am the marketing person who designs and maintains all the brochures, logo's, presentations, newsletters, letterheads and all the artwork needed. I also monitor our newsletter audience reach, CRM network, and work closely with the Chairman on projects and other tasks. I really enjoy my day job as I have awesome and friendly colleagues and there is always a new challenge and a new task to figure out. That's my day job...

The rest of my day and weekends I spend dedicated to Orpen Film making Co., Fabuloso Clip-in Extensions, freelance design and stationary projects. I have never been the type of person to only do one thing at a time: I love a challenge. One thing I have learnt though is this: "Under commit and Over deliver". Great lesson I have learnt the hard way in life: in both my personal and professional capacity. One of the reasons I moved to Cape Town was to escape and break the habit of my yes-girl habit... its okay to say yes but it is not ok to neglect the people you care about or projects you have made commitments too... so I am only a yes-girl during my day job and only if I can deliver 100%... 

My dream is to be able to work full time with Te (no more 7 ' O Clock but around our clock) in an "Orpen Film Making Co. space" that will allow me to continue doing freelance design projects as well as allow me the focus and time to market Fabuloso the way I would like to in order to recruit more salons and resellers. 

I have always had big dreams but I love how my dreams and Te's dreams intertwined their similarities and adapted into the dreams we now share. 

Our ultimate dream is to mesh our passion for Film Making, our space, our love for people and our taste in coffee... this is a GRAND dream but... 

"We Believe". 

xxx

TheFutureMrsOrpen: De

#TeMarriesDe #121 days 

# 11: A SMILE

The 11th May-Photo-A-Day: "A SMILE"

Today is my favourite day of a month as my favourite number is ELEVEN. You see when I am on the right path I see the number show up everywhere and it's best combination is a 9:11 and an even better: 11:11 on the 11th.

Therefore when Te (who happens to have been born on the 11th of June) and I got engaged, we looked for a Saturday in the year where the 11th would fall on... Today happens to be the first wedding date option but we decided on September as we wanted to save as much as we could for the big day and honeymoon.

Although Te and I did not get married today, we still got to do something out of the ordinary and fun to mark the occasion: for once we were the couple in front of the camera. 

We had the privilege of having the talented and inspiring couple from Lad & Lass, Dylan Harbour and his lovely wife Emma-Jane Harbour from Emmajanenation, capture snaps of us to be used on our film company website, Orpen Film Making Co 

(to be launched soon.) 

As per the previous posting: The 10th May-Photo-A-Day: "STARS", you learnt that I don't really do the whole in front of the camera thing very well and some how always end up with the same "deer caught in the headlight" look. But, today was different I hope... Emma and Dylan made us feel so comfortable in front of the camera and never once did it feel silly to be the subject for a change. Te and I wanted to capture who we are as a couple and what we represent as Orpen Film Making Co.:  Cinematic filmmakers in love.

I love how Te knows how to make me laugh without having to try too hard; which made for a natural smile instead of my usual big eyed and toothy grin. Unlike me, Te is such a natural and looked incredible no wonder he has had a few "in front of camera" jobs before. 

I don't have any snaps of us from today so instead I will share one of Te as he is the reason

for the smile on my face everyday - Te says he knew I was the one he wanted to spend the rest of time with from my very first smile, across the deck at George's on 4th. 

That story to come soon.

"A SMILE"

Oh!!! This is why he was such a natural today!!!

xxx

TheVERYLUCKYFutureMrsOrpen: De

#TeMarriesDe #126 days - My count down time was incorrect